Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Travel Time New York

Travelling between Manhattan and Brooklyn is going to get harder. In 2019 the MTA plans to close the L train's East River tunnel for 18 months. This will affect the journeys of thousands of travelers in New York every day.

2019 might seem like a long time away but it's not too early for Google's Sidewalk Labs to start planning for the disruption. They have teamed up with Transportation Alternatives to release a new interactive map which shows how your journey might be affected when there are no L train stops in Manhattan.

The NYC Transit Explorer allows you to plan and view travel times and routes across New York's five boroughs. The map is really useful for planning any journey on New York's transit network. However it is far more than just a simple journey planner. As well as showing you how to get from A to B on the MTA the NYC Transit Explorer can also be used to view how long it would take to get anywere in the city from any location.

Click on any location on the map and a colored overlay will show you how long it will take you to travel anywhere in the city on the public transit network. It also allows you to adjust the settings to see how long your journey times would take at different departure times, with different maximum walking distances and with different transfer & mode preferences.

The NYC Transit Explorer isn't only useful for planning how you might travel when the East River tunnel closes. The map has the option to include the L train if you want to see your best route while the tunnel is still open.